Gavin tensed. Reid said that he would cast a curse on Gavin, and curses were designed to cause harm. “But?”
“But every person is born with a finite amount of life magick in their bodies.” Reid reached into a drawer and pulled out a syringe. “Each time you draw from your own life magick, you’ll be siphoning from a well that does not refill. And if it empties completely, you’ll die, whether you’ve won the tournament or not. It’s permanent and irreversible.”
There it was.
If he did this, he’d be restricting his magick usage for the rest of his life.
But if he didn’t go through with it, the rest of his life would probably be a lot shorter anyway.
“You said you knew I’d come here,” said Gavin. “Have you offered this to anyone else?”
Reid smiled ghoulishly. “You’ll be my first attempt. I’ve been waiting for the perfect volunteer.”
“And what makes me perfect?”
“You’re desperate,” Reid set the syringe down on a tray beside the cot and picked up a tattoo needle with a spellstone embedded in the hilt. “But more importantly, because I’ve met with almost every other champion, and found myself unimpressed. It’s true, Grieve, that the other families have never respected us the way they should. Especially the Lowes. That’s something I would like to change.”
Perhaps the words were mere flattery, but they stoked something in Gavin, kindling a flame of approval that he hadn’t felt before. Nobody believed in Gavin Grieve.
But Reid MacTavish did. He’d deemed Gavin worthy of power. It didn’t matter, suddenly, if that power was dangerous, if this bargain came with strings Gavin couldn’t sever.
“All right,” he said. “I’m ready.”
“Excellent,” said Reid briskly. “Now take off your coat and face away from me—it’ll be less painful if you can’t see what I’m doing.”
Gavin sat, his jacket bunched in his lap. He tried to focus on the shelf of raw magick flasks in front of him, each marked with a label indicating the person who’d brought them in for a commissioned cursering. He swallowed a sudden lump in his throat.
He wasn’t scared. He wasn’t.
Goose bumps swept across his skin as the cursemaker rolled Gavin’s left sleeve up to the shoulder. He remembered the last time he’d been this close to another boy: Owen Liu, at a dive bar on the outskirts of Ilvernath, his fingertips tingling with something that wasn’t magick but felt like it, with an entirely different idea of what the night would hold.
This was less fun.
“This will hurt.” Reid’s breath was hot on his ear.
It was Gavin’s turn to smile ghoulishly. “Good.”
The tip of the syringe brushed against his bicep, light as a feather. And then the pain began.
It was like nothing he’d ever felt before. Like being carved up from the inside out; like something was being ripped from him, an organ he couldn’t name but one he knew he needed. Magick sizzled through him, so strong he couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, and then, as he gasped for air, blotches of black began to seep through the edges of his vision.
Gavin came to, slumped over the edge of the cot, blinking tears from his eyes. The room swam around him as he sat up.
“Is it done?” he whispered.
Reid’s face came into focus beside him. He looked almost … guilty.
“Yes,” he said. “It’s done.”
Gavin’s left arm throbbed. He turned his head toward the pain and sucked in a breath.
A tattoo of an hourglass stretched across his bicep. The top half was full, the bottom half empty in a way that felt expectant. Blood oozed from the edges of the hourglass for a moment, but then the dark lines of the tattoo seemed to suck them in. A metallic taste filled Gavin’s mouth. He coughed, then grabbed a swab of gauze from the nearby table and coughed again. The white fabric came back speckled with blood.
“What did you do to me?” he croaked, dizzy.
“You shouldn’t need to fill up your spellrings any longer, just make sure they’re touching your skin,” explained Reid. He was busily disinfecting the tattoo needle. “Each time your life magick goes into a ring, some of the grains at the top will fall. It doesn’t fill up again. When the top’s empty, you die. So watch yourself. Understand?”
Gavin nodded. He couldn’t take his eyes off the tattoo. The ink was green and purple and blue, swirling slowly and lazily beneath his skin like a cluster of exposed veins. Not the color of any magick he’d seen before.